UPDATE 2-U.S. justices weigh limits to police cellphone searches

WASHINGTON, April 29 U.S. Supreme Court justices
on Tuesday appeared to seek a compromise over whether police
officers need warrants to search cellphones when a suspect is
arrested.

In two hours of oral arguments, the justices appeared
sympathetic to the need of police officers to quickly search
phones but also were wary of privacy concerns raised by the
amount of personal data now kept on mobile devices.

The justices varied over how they approached the issue, with
some more in favor of warrants than others. The result could be
a ruling that says police need a warrant in some circumstances
but not in others. It was unclear what rationale the court would
embrace. A ruling is expected by the end of June.

Several justices appeared concerned about granting the
police unfettered access to the vast amount of information
contained on smartphones.

By contrast, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that criminals
have embraced new technology, which has enabled them to be "more
dangerous, more sophisticated, more elusive."

"CLOSE ANALOGUE"

The nine justices are weighing cases from California and
Massachusetts arising from criminal prosecutions that used
evidence obtained without a court-issued warrant.

The legal question rests on whether the Fourth Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution, which bars unreasonable searches,
requires police following an arrest to get court approval before
a cellphone can be searched.

The two defendants challenging their convictions, David
Riley and Brima Wurie, say evidence found on their phones should
not have been allowed as evidence at trial.

State and federal government lawyers have told the court
that searching a cellphone is no different than warrantless
searches of other items commonly found on a person at the time
of arrest. The administration of President Barack Obama is
backed by 16 states in the case.

During the arguments, various justices proposed different
rules that lower courts could follow.

One possible outcome, mentioned by Justice Antonin Scalia,
would be for a search not to require a warrant so long as the
evidence in question was directly related to the criminal
investigation. Scalia said it "seems absurd" that police would
be able to search someone's smartphone following an arrest for
not wearing a seat belt.

Justice Samuel Alito indicated interest in a rule that would
allow police to search for material that is a "close analogue"
to the type of evidence police can traditionally search without
a warrant, such as wallets and address books.

For the second time in two weeks, the justices were required
to weigh the growing use of cloud computing, which allows
personal files that can be accessed via a mobile device to be
stored remotely. Last week, it arose as the court weighed the
fate of online TV startup Aereo Inc, which is locked in a
copyright fight with broadcast TV networks. [ID: nL2N0NE16E]

In Tuesday's arguments, the justices considered whether one
way of limiting what police can search would be to prohibit
access to anything stored in the cloud, an approach the Obama
administration suggested in court papers.

Riley was convicted of three charges relating to an August
2009 incident in San Diego in which shots were fired at an
occupied vehicle. Local prosecutors linked him to the crime in
part based on a photograph police found on his smartphone

In the other case, police searched Wurie's cellphone without
a warrant after his September 2007 arrest for suspected drug
dealing. Officers used the device, which was not a smartphone,
to find a phone number that took them to Wurie's house in
Boston, where drugs, a gun and cash were found.

Should the court limit the scope of what police can search
without a warrant, both men could still potentially lose as the
searches in their cases may still not need a warrant.

The cases are Riley v. California, 13-132 and U.S. v. Wurie,
13-212.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller and
Cynthia Osterman)

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